The Odyssey of the Petliura Library and the Records of theUkrainian National Republic during World War II

PATRICIA KENNEDY GRIMSTED

The Petliura Library in Paris is now located on the second floor of a building that it shares with the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church (6, rue de Palestine, 75019 Paris). At present it has only 57 of the close to 20,000 books that it had gathered between 1929 and 1940. From this small remnant of the original collections that remained when the library reopened after the war in April 1946, the library has grown and surpassed its prewar holdings, with a total of 30,000 volumes and an additional 73 runs of newspapers and periodicals. Gone, however, are the more valuable original collections of books, many with dedicatory autographs and other inscriptions. Many of the prewar records of the library and most of the archival materials that had been collected before the war also are gone. The library´s postwar revival and the purchase of the building it occupies today were partially aided by funds received from Germany in 1964 as reparation for the looting and destruction of the library during the occupation.1

When Arkady Joukovsky (Arkadii ZhukovsTcyi), a Ukrainian emigre professor in Paris, described the history and collections of the Petliura Library in 1990, he presumed that the prewar library had been definitively destroyed or irretrievably lost, or both, during the war.2 When a brief Ukrainian adaptation of his article subsequently appeared in Kyiv, the editors were not aware that a small part of the library and some of its prewar records were also in Kyiv.3 In a historical memoir account of the library, Vasyl´ Mykhal´chuk claimed that a fragmentary, second-hand report of a box of books marked "Ukrainian Library-Paris" found in the basement of the former Lenin Library (now the Russian State Library) in the early 1990s, was proof that the library that had been seized by the Nazis ended up in Moscow after the war.4

Although the bulk of the prewar book holdings have not yet been located and identified, nor their fate definitively established, some have recently surfaced in Minsk and Kyiv, and others in Moscow. In fact, 260 books with Petliura Library stamps identified in what is now the National Library of Belarus were transferred-or, as reported from Minsk, "returned"-to Kyiv in the late 1980s.5 They are now held in the National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine, although the fact of their transfer and present location has not been published previously. That same library reports having purchased 10 more books with Petliura Library stamps in the early 1980s at auction in Kyiv.6 We now know that a large part of the Petliura Library records, many of its prewar catalogues, and some of its unique archival materials have survived their wartime odyssey, although unfortunately they are now dispersed among no less than two archives in Moscow and two in Kyiv.

None of the library catalogues remained in Paris after the war, although those associated with the library had a good idea of the nature and extent of the prewar holdings, particularly thanks to Ivan Rudychiv (1881-1958), who had served as the librarian since its foundation. Rudychiv was summoned to Berlin by the Nazis in June 1941 "to look after the library," after they had transferred the library books and archival collections earlier that year. As it turned out, he never saw the library in Berlin before being allowed to return to Paris in October 1942. After the war and until his retirement, Rudychiv helped rebuild the library collections. He never knew about the migrations of the library, nor could he have suspected that many of the library catalogues would turn up in Moscow, or that his own early wartime accounts of the library, diary, correspondence, and other personal papers would surface half a century later in Kyiv.

The fate of the Petliura Library and its archival holdings from Paris is a small but tragic example of wartime and postwar library and archival displacements. In fact, almost all surviving documentation of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) throughout the continent was targeted by the Nazis, seized during the war, and then seized again by Soviet authorities in its aftermath. The present attempt to portray the odyssey of the Petliura Library in mat context reflects the broader political and ideological clashes of the war and postwar period that have left the remnants of this small but important center of Ukrainian political and cultural life dispersed in the capitals of four nations-Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and France.

World War II brought with it the greatest archival dislocations in history. Soviet authorities succeeded in evacuating only their most precious secret files to Siberian havens. Others were hidden or intentionally destroyed to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Some archives fell victim to the bombs that reduced major European cities to rubble. Others were saved by Nazi evacuations to various salt mines, monasteries, and castles. Many were looted, first by the Nazis for a variety of political, strategic, and propaganda purposes, and then by the Allied victors. Little has been known until recently about the many displaced archives that were captured after the war by Soviet authorities. Because of these archives´ use for "operational" purposes, most of them were hidden in secret repositories until the end of the Soviet regime. And even since, it has been difficult to identify them, because integral collections were broken up and dispersed for sundry operational purposes; many were never adequately described, and hence are not now being made available for public research. In Moscow and Kyiv today, there are not even preliminary published lists of the variety and location of "trophy" materials, or how and by what name (and number) they have been assigned to fonds in Soviet archives. In many cases, the archives mat hold them today have no information about where they were found after the war.

The Records of the UNR and Origins of the Petliura Library

When Petliura´s UNR government was forced into exile in 1920, its leaders tried to salvage various government records and related documentation. Files were fragmented, as the UNR leaders found themselves in exile in different countries. Those UNR records remaining in Ukraine were taken into custody by Soviet authorities, as treasures of the growing secret divisions of the new state archives in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Some were among the most valued files that Soviet authorities evacuated to the east at the outbreak of war in 1941. UNR documentation abroad migrated and became concentrated in several different centers during the interwar period. Personal collections of UNR leaders, augmented by related documentation and miscellaneous papers created in emigration, were scattered all over Europe. There was no real archival home for the records of the regime in exile without a country.

The UNR Directorate chairman Symon Petliura initially settled in Tarnow, Poland, with his wife and daughter. A major part of the UNR records in Poland remained in a basement in a house that the UNR had purchased and used as its headquarters in Tarnow, the last seat of government during the abortive Polish-Ukrainian campaign against the Bolsheviks. Records there included many files of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Finance, together with what was left of the currency issued by the UNR regime. Additional documentation was in the UNR headquarters and other places in Warsaw. Other UNR documentation, and especially some of the records relating to the UNR military mission in Poland and to military operations, were scattered throughout Poland. Some of these eventually ended up with the archive of General Tadeusz Rozwadowski, the Polish commandant in Galicia, and are now held in the Jozef Pilsudski Institute in New York City, from which several documentary collections have appeared.7 Most recently, some files of the UNR government in exile from the years 1984-1992 (when it was headed by Ivan Samiilenko, a Ukrainian emigre in the United States), were transferred to Kyiv and deposited in one of the national archives (TsDAVO).8

Pursued by Soviet agents, Petliura left Poland in disguise at the end of 1923, and settled briefly in Budapest, Zurich, and then Geneva, before moving to Paris in October 1924. In Petliura´s immediate entourage was V´iacheslav Prokopovych, his former prime minister and earlier minister of education, who helped him establish the journal Tryzub (Trident) in Paris as an organ of the UNR. During the spring of 1926, Petliura was living with his wife and daughter in a modest Latin Quarter hotel. On 26 May 1926 he was assassinated in broad daylight.

Petliura´s hitherto unknown assassin, Samuel (or Sholem) Schwarzbard (Shvartsbard) (1886-1938) was a Jewish emigre from the Russian Empire with anarchist leanings, who had first came to France in 1910. Returning to Odesa after the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, he was active in the Red Brigades during the civil war. Schwarzbard was back in Paris by 1920, continuing to frequent Bolshevik circles, and had reportedly been preoccupied with Petliura´s arrival in the French capital.9

Schwarzbard was vindicated in a highly publicized trial. The defense represented Schwarzbard as a Jewish hero, seeking revenge for 14 family members killed in anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, for which he held Petliura responsible-an argument strongly supported by Jewish interests, which bitterly linked Petliura to the pogroms that took many Jewish lives.

Was Schwarzbard a lone player? The prosecution accused the assassin of acting on behalf of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, which considered Petliura´s leadership of the Ukrainian nationalist cause abroad a threat to the Soviet regime. Schwarzbard was linked to a recognized Bolshevik secret service (OGPU) agent, Mikhail Volodin; but Volodin had expeditiously returned to Moscow before he could be called to testify at the trial.10 Although no documentation from Soviet sources has yet been released proving Schwarzbard´s link to the Soviet OGPU, Soviet authorities clearly had good reason to pursue Petliura. Mindful of the earlier UNR alliance with Poland and Petliura´s close ties to Jozef Pilsudski, Soviet authorities became more apprehensive-following Pilsudski´s May 1926 coup d´etat-that a new Ukrainian-Polish campaign against the USSR might be imminent. They were also anxious to prevent Petliura´s wooing of French support. Furthermore, the issue of Jewish-Ukrainian animosity under Petliura lent itself to exploitation by the Bolsheviks to discredit the Ukrainian national cause. Recently, as another twist, a French historian suggested possible French governmental diplomatic and economic interests vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the acquittal of Petliura´s assassin.11 Others have speculated that Petliura might have been at least partially a victim of rival factions within the Ukrainian emigre political spectrum (with which Moscow interests were perhaps also cynically involved).

The still unresolved interpretations of Petliura´s assassination and the acquittal of his assassin are reflected in the historiographical interpretations of the period and appraisals of his political career and the briefly independent regime he led.12 Be that as may, Petliura´s death in Paris focused international attention on Ukraine and produced a martyr to the cause of Ukrainian independence-a cause that waited over half a century to be realized.

More to the point of the present study, Petliura himself had recommended the foundation of a Ukrainian library in Paris earlier that year, pointing as examples to the Polish Library and the Turgenev Russian Library that were already thriving in the French capital.13 Soon after Petliura´s death, a library was established to perpetuate his memory by Prokopovych and other UNR exiles, including Ilarion Kosenko, Oleksander Shul´hyn, and General Oleksander Udovychenko. Although Paris hardly rivaled Prague as a center of Ukrainian emigre intellectual and political life during the interwar period, the Petliura Library, with the support of the Ukrainian community throughout the world, became a focal point of emigre politics and Ukrainian culture.

The Symon Petliura Ukrainian Library in Paris (Bibliotheque ukrainienne Simon Petlura a Paris) opened to the public in 1929. Continuing to grow during the subsequent decade, by January 1940 it housed 14,458 volumes and 143 periodical titles, not counting the relatively minimal holdings of its several branches elsewhere in France-Chalette, Audun-le-Tiche, Lyon, and Grenoble, as well as Esch in Luxemburg. Never rivaling the much more prominent Polish Library (140,000 volumes) that was well supported by the newly independent Polish Republic, or the larger Russian emigre and staunchly anti-Bolshevik Turgenev Library in Paris (120,000 volumes by 1939), which even received a prominent building from the mayor of Paris, the Petliura Library remained a relatively small operation. Initially housed in rented quarters of three rooms (11, place du Port Royal) in the thirteenth arrondissement, it moved in the 1930s to a five-room apartment (41, rue de La Tour d´Auvergne) in the ninth arrondissement, which also housed the editorial office of Tryzub.

Among its archival materials, the library preserved a few files of the Petliura government and some of UNR exiled leaders, including the minister of finance in the Central Rada, Pavlo ChyzhevsTsyi, who was subsequently a Ukrainian trade representative in Paris, Geneva, and other European capitals-together with Symon Petliura´s own library and a few of his personal papers. In early 1939, the library received the records of the UNR diplomatic mission in Paris and the Ukrainian press bureau. Those archival materials were intermingled with the Tryzub editorial records that were also held in the library and included some correspondence of the Russian and Ukrainian writer, Boris Lazarevskii (1871-1936), and the papers of his brother, HHb Lazarevslcyi (1877-1949), a journalist and literary specialist active in the Ukrainian movement.14 The library had built up a significant collection of official printed documents and brochures from the Petliura government, newspaper clippings, and memoir materials from the Ukrainian emigration. There were records of the Schwarzbard trial and the Association of Combatants of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic. There were some files of the Union of Ukrainian Emigre Organizations in France and other emigre associations. A bibliographic compendium on Petliura, prepared by Petro Zlenko in 1939, was based on the library holdings.15 With the support of the Ukrainian community throughout the world, the library remained a strong focus of opposition to the Soviet regime that had foiled Ukrainian efforts to establish independence after 1917.

Nazi Seizure of the Petliura Library

When France was invaded by Nazi Germany and Paris fell to occupying forces in 1940-still during the period of the Nazi-Soviet pact-Hitler was already planning his Drang nach Osten. As one phase of the preparations, Nazi specialists had targeted various Slavic emigre libraries in France and other countries in Western Europe as important intelligence sources, and their followers as potential allies in the Nazis´ subsequent anti-Soviet campaign. As librarian Ivan Rudychiv confided in his diary in January 1941, the notion "was circulating among Russian emigre circles [in Paris] that Petliura was the first great nationalist, and that Hitler was a student of Petliura." Furthermore, it was rumored, Hitler was already endorsing Ukrainian independence.16 For Nazi propagandists, although the UNR was traditionally pro-French and pro-Polish and anti-German, Petliura´s antisemitic reputation made him a symbol to be manipulated for the Nazi cause. The Petliura Library had an additional appeal, in that its martyr patron died at the hand of an acquitted assassin who sought revenge for Petliura´s alleged role in anti-Jewish pogroms.17 Speculations that his assassin had been encouraged by Soviet intelligence sources could also increase the usefulness of Petliura´s martyrdom to Nazi propagandists anxious to exploit anti-Soviet sentiments abroad and in the soon-to-be occupied Ukrainian lands.

Efforts to evacuate the library were too little, too late.18 Following the Nazi occupation of Paris, already on 13-15 July, the building of the UNR Mission (24, rue Glaciere) was searched and many of its contents confiscated (with some of the archival materials from the library that had been moved there); the building was sealed by the Nazi police (Geheime Feldpolizeigruppe 540). German authorities, who were obviously acquainted with Ukrainian emigre affairs, first visited the main library building (41, rue de La Tour d´Auvergne) on 22 July and interviewed Rudychiv for at least an hour. Soon afterwards Rudychiv was required to hand over "the founding regulation of the library, a picture of Petliura´s grave, and the maps from the library." On 22 October 1940, the Petliura Library building was sealed by Nazi secret police. By 13 December, the library was officially declared "under German protection" (unter deutschem Schutz). The library and its archival materials were confiscated on 20/21 January 1941, with follow-up seizures on 24 January.19 Rudychiv´s detailed accounts of the Nazi visits and subsequent confiscation, his memoir account entitled "lak tse bulo," and what would appear to have been his own diary for the period 1940-1942, survived the war and are now open for research in Kyiv.20

The Petliura Library shared its wartime fate with the two other Slavic libraries mentioned above, the Turgenev Library and the Polish Library, both of which were seized in Paris at approximately the same time. According to contemporary Nazi reports, over 100,000 books were taken from the Turgenev Library, and 130,000 volumes from the Polish Library.21 Nazi figures show that they seized "15,000 books, maps, photographs, and museum pieces from the Petliura Library in autumn 1940."22 Rudychiv´s reports set the total above 18,000 volumes in the library alone. After confiscation by the Nazi secret police, the materials were first taken to a Paris collection point (45-47, rue La Bruyere), and then were all shipped to Berlin in early 1941.

The Petliura Library in Berlin

One Nazi report noted that "the Petliura Library in Paris owned by the Ukrainian Emigre Union had been evacuated by the Gestapo under orders from Georg Leibbrandt."23 Leibbrandt (1899-1982), born in the Odesa region, had been one of Alfred Rosenberg´s top aides in Berlin since the early 1930s, and headed the Eastern Section (Amt Osten) of Rosenberg´s Nazi Party Foreign Policy Office.24 After the formation of the Reich Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories (RMbO) under Alfred Rosenberg, which governed the Soviet lands under Nazi occupation, Leibbrandt headed one of the principal sections of the ministry. Liebbrandt first visited the library in Paris in 1937 and made extensive inquiries, according to Rudychiv. His further involvement with the Petliura library is confirmed by Rudychiv, although as it turned out, Liebbrandt had little time for Rudychiv once he arrived in Berlin. Nevertheless, it was apparently Liebbrandt´s office that was paying Rudychiv´s monthly stipend during his stay in Berlin.25 Leibbrandt had long been forming his own special collection of archival materials relating to German settlers and communities in southern Russia; he later acquired more significant archival materials relating to German settlements in southern Ukraine, some of which were seized in Odesa in 1941 and 1942 on his request by the notorious Kiinzberg brigades.26 He was considered one of the top ministry specialists on Ukraine.

After the Petliura materials from Paris arrived in Berlin in early 1941, they were examined by Reich security forces, the Foreign Ministry, and representatives on behalf of Leibbrandt. However, as it appears from the treatment of Rudychiv, they decided that the library was of minimal political and strategic interest and turned it over to the Special Command of Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the infamous ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg). One of the major ideological research and propaganda arms of the Nazi regime, the ERR was involved in looted cultural treasures of all types, and especially those from "enemies of the Reich," such as Jews and Masons. The ERR had already established a major anti-Bolshevik research center in Berlin, along the lines of its Center for the Study of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt. According to Rudychiv´s account, the ERR was already involved with the Petliura Library seizure in Paris, although Rudychiv had been told the library was then under the control of the Foreign Ministry and Leibbrandt in Berlin.

Rudychiv had been promised in Paris that the library would be reestablished in Berlin, where he would serve as librarian under the control of the Nazi foreign ministry functionary Doringer.27 After Rudychiv was brought to Berlin in June 1941, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, he met with Doringer at the Foreign Office (Auswartiges Amt). He also met with the wealthy Ukrainian emigre political leader Oleksander Sevriuk, who had earlier been associated with the UNR, but who at that point was apparently collaborating with the Nazis. Rudychiv was then informed that there was no room to establish the library in Berlin, and that it remained "in packing sacks." Later, in early July, he was told that it would probably soon be shipped to Kyiv after war began on the Eastern Front. He also met with Ivan Mirchuk (Mircuk), who was then directing the Ukrainian Scientific Institute (UkramsTcyi naukovyi instytut) in Berlin, together with Professor Zenon Kuzelia, both of whom received him "coldly" and showed no interest in the library or in Rudychiv´s own fate. In fact, Rudychiv never saw the library in Berlin. He was kept in Berlin during the summer and early fall, and it was suggested that he prepare some reports about the library, which he did. In October 1942, he was permitted to return to Paris.28

After his return to Paris, Rudychiv prepared a report for the Petliura Library Council in France in December 1942, a copy of which is retained in the Paris library with the library records.29 But that short report is of much less interest than the more detailed reports he prepared in Berlin, including his memoir account of the demise and disappearance of the library, "lak tse bulo." According to his December 1942 report, Rudychiv gave that memoir to his old friend levhen (or Jevhen) Vyrovyj from Prague, whom he met in Berlin. He also mentions having given him some other documentation relating to the library for the Museum of the Struggle for Ukrainian Independence before he left Berlin.30 If, presumably, Vyrovyj succeeded in taking Rudychiv´s papers and the other documentation from the Petliura Library to Prague, they probably came to Kyiv with the holdings that Soviet authorities seized from Prague after the war.31

According to one Nazi report, there had been an inquiry about the library from Oleksander Platonovych Semenenko, who initially served as mayor of Kharkiv under Nazi occupation, but German authorities in Berlin did not want to give any details to him. Apparently, the Nazis had seriously considered shipping the library to Ukraine, but then decided that the library would not be of much official value in occupied Ukraine anyway, because many of the holdings were French books. At that point they quoted a figure of no more than 10,000 volumes in Berlin. If this figure is not an error (elsewhere they referred to 15,000 volumes), it suggests that either they had not shipped all the books to Berlin or had already weeded out almost one-third of them.32 In fact, under the ERR in Berlin the Petliura materials were almost immediately allocated to the so-called Ostbucherei, the special "Eastern Library" relating to Bolshevism and other East European matters, developed under the Rosenberg command. The same fate befell the Turgenev Library and probably at least part of the Polish Library from Paris.33 Possibly some of the books had been set aside for the planned Central Library of the Hohe Schule, the ERR´s planned party ideological training institute to be established in the Bavarian Alps after the war. Books intended for that library were being shipped to the monastery of Tanzenberg in the Tyrol during the war, where they were found and restituted by British military authorities in 1945.34 After the war two crates with a complete set of the journal Tryzub found in Austria were returned to the Petliura Library in Paris by the French Art Reparation Commission, but further details about where they were found are not available.35

Many Nazi agencies-not only Leibbrandt and the ERR-were utilizing the propaganda potential of Ukrainian independence. Such interest was not new in Germany and followed German support for the Ukrainian independence movement as a component of its geopolitical strategy of Mitteleuropa at the end of World War I. It was evident that the Nazis intended to use the lure of Ukrainian independence and even Petliura´s alleged antisemitism to win the Ukrainian population to the Nazi cause. During the occupation in Lviv, the Nazis allegedly used Petliura´s name in connection with some of their own anti-Jewish atrocities. In eastern Ukraine, special efforts were under way to locate and collect Ukrainian archival materials from the immediate postrevolutionary and civil war period. ERR reports now in Kyiv show the extent to which that agency was preoccupied with library and archival sources relating to that period. Work started immediately after occupation in Ukraine to develop a special collection called the "Revolutionary Archive," formed of documentation from the period of the revolution, civil war, and attempts to establish an independent Ukrainian state. This was hindered by the fact that Soviet archival authorities had previously evacuated many of the most sensitive UNR archival materials with the Secret Division from the state archives that were taken to the east.

The ERR Ratibor Center

After Western Allied bombing started in Berlin, many Nazi units were moved from the capital into more remote areas, most particularly to the east. Starting in the summer of 1943, the headquarters of various Rosenberg command units and major ERR research and library operations were transferred from Berlin to the relatively isolated city of Ratibor (Pol. Raciborz), 80 kilometers southwest of Katowice on the Oder (Odra) River in Silesia. Among other operations, the anti-Bolshevik research and propaganda units were centered there. As support for those operations, the special library collections of the Ostbucherei were also moved to Ratibor, and its holdings organized in several different buildings in the city. Castles and other sites in the surrounding area became storage and work sites for different ERR units. By February 1944, at least some holdings from the Petliura Library-along with those from the Turgenev Library-were housed in the former Lagerplatz Synagogue in the center of the city, under the direction of the Eastern Command (Sonderstab Osten).36 A December 1944 report notes at least one crate from the Petliura Library being held in that main ERR library center (Niedertorstrasse 3).37 The Western section of the Ostbucherei held related materials in Western European languages, including some of the materials from the Slavic libraries in Paris.

Details regarding the extent of the Petliura collections in Ratibor have not been found. It is possible that not all of the library was shipped to Ratibor-or that many of the crates were never opened, as a surviving picture of one of the ERR warehouses suggests. Most likely, the Ukrainian archival materials from Paris, which included the records of the Petliura Library itself, the Ukrainian Press Bureau, the journal Tryzub, and files from other Ukrainian organizations in Paris, were held by the ERR there as well, but the extent to which ERR records of their Ratibor operations were later destroyed makes it impossible to establish precise details.

It is also not clear whether any of the Paris materials were being integrated with other Ukrainian materials from the 1917-1923 period that the ERR had collected in Kyiv and shipped to Ratibor. The Nazis brought to Ratibor a major segment of what they called the "Revolutionary Archive" from Kyiv, containing politically sensitive materials regarding the Ukrainian anti-Bolshevik governments and their efforts to establish a separate state (1917-1923).38 This, for them, was of much greater political significance. By September 1942 in Kyiv, they had recorded 2,000 units with original posters, handbills, and leaflets from the years 1917-ca. 1920, including materials from General Aleksandr Denikin.39 By the time they shipped the collection to Ratibor in 1943, there were at least 3,000 plundered units relating to the various independent Ukrainian governments during the revolutionary and civil war period.40 The existence of this archive in the ERR anti-Bolshevik research center in Ratibor is also confirmed by a remaining exhibition poster that highlights it, along with the Communist Party archives from Dnipropetrovsk and Smolensk, together with materials from the Anti-Religious Museum in Kyiv.41 We have no indication of what research was actually progressing or of any tracts or propaganda pieces that were produced in Ratibor on the basis of these materials. In December 1944 the Dnipropetrovsk Party files were being held in the former Lagerplatz Synagogue with the Russian-language part of the Ostbucherei (again Niedertorstrasse 3), which is the same address cited for at least part of the Petliura Library at that time.42

Reports from the Ratibor operation as late as January 1945 confirm that the ERR did not have sufficient rolling stock to evacuate many of their Ratibor holdings to the west during their retreat. ERR-targeted evacuation sites in the Bamberg/Staffelstein area of northern Bavaria were later taken over by the U.S. Army.43 The evacuated ERR materials found in those sites were taken to the Offenbach Archival Depot, the U.S. library restitution center near Frankfurt. We have no indication of any materials from the Petliura Library found there.44 If evacuation was not possible, a remaining ERR agent "was prepared to destroy the materials there with gasoline and canisters readied for the task." According to the last ERR report from Ratibor, many of the most important materials from Ratibor itself had already been evacuated by the end of January 1945, and the report´s authors still hoped "it would be possible to take more on open wagons to Castle Banz." They were preparing other Ratibor office files for destruction, but decided not to destroy the Ostbucherei because they still hoped to evacuate it and/or return and resume its use, if the war situation changed. If that was impossible, they assumed the abandoned materials would be "captured by the Bolsheviks."45

Apparently, the ERR was able to destroy many of its own potentially incriminating operational records before their final evacuation from Ratibor in January 1945. At least, to this date, only a few office records from Ratibor, such as copies of outgoing reports, and copies of incoming reports from the east have surfaced.46 Fortunately, the Nazis made a point not to destroy the plundered archives and library materials they had collected.47 But at the same time, evacuation priorities involved further splitting up and dispersal of integral collections. Indeed it was one of the Nazi principles not to move all of a given collection or group of records together for fear that all would be lost. Rather they separated out according to established priorities, or sometimes according to how much time and space they had for a given evacuation shipment. With the speed of the approaching Red Army during the winter of 1945, some of the materials evacuated from Ratibor had to be abandoned en route back to Germany.

Possible RSHA Involvement in Silesia

It is possible that at least part of the archival materials from the Petliura Library in Paris remained with, or was turned over to, the Nazi Secret Police (SD) and eventually to the Reich Central Security Office-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) in Berlin (of which the SD was an arm). Available Nazi reports make no specific mention about the archival materials that were seized with the Petliura materials from Paris. An acquisitions register for the Nazi security services archival depot (Auswertungsstelle Frankreich) in Berlin (Neue Friedrichstrasse 50), which survives in Moscow, nevertheless references receipts from "Ukrainian organizations in France" in 1941 and 1942. Neither quantities nor the precise names of organizations are given.48 If those references were in fact to archival materials among the Petliura Library collections, then it might mean that some of the archival materials had been split off in Berlin from other parts of the Petliura Library and turned over to the RSHA. If this had been the case (as it was with part of the Rothschild family archives and those of other Jewish and emigre organizations from France), then some of the archival materials from the Petliura Library may have been taken from Berlin by the RSHA to their own archival center under their Seventh Office-Amt VII-for Ideological Research and Analysis (Weltanschauliche Forschung und Auswertung). We still have only circumstantial evidence for the "division of spoils" between the ERR and the RSHA.

When they moved out of Berlin in 1943, the major archive and library center of Amt VII, Ausweilstelle Schlesiersee, was first established in an elegant castle in a village on the shore of the Schlesiersee (Pol. Slawa).49 In April 1944, the RSHA acquired the baroque castle of Count von Althann-Schloss Wb´lfelsdorf (Pol. Wilkanow), further southeast near Habelschwerdt (Pol. Bystrzyca-Klodzko). Although some offices and related materials remained in Schlesiersee, the RSHA moved most of their archival holdings to the Habelschwerdt area in May 1944.50 As the end of the war drew near, the RSHA was unable to evacuate most of their loot from that region. Because Soviet authorities found all of the RSHA holdings in the Habelschwerdt and Wolfelsdorf locations in the summer of 1945, and shipped them all to Moscow (some were first shipped to Kyiv), we have more information about the actual materials that the Nazis had sequestered there.

Although no surviving materials from the Petliura Library are specifically mentioned in Soviet reports of their seizures from Wolfelsdorf, there were other rich emigre Russian and a few Ukrainian emigre collections in that RSHA center. The fact that the most detailed reconnaissance report from Habelschwerdt that has surfaced to date was prepared by a Ukrainian Commu nist Party historian, Ivan Shevchenko, sent from Kyiv by the Communist Party Central Committee specifically to examine the archival holdings, makes it un likely that he would have overlooked the Petliura materials had they been there. He does, however, mention materials from the Polish Library in Paris. He also notes, "among reference materials," some rare publications about Bukovyna and Ukrainian information bulletins in French, published in Geneva in 1931. He might not have recognized the stamp of the Petliura Library (which was only in French), but certainly some of those publications he mentioned could have come from its holdings.51 Since he did find materials from the Museum of Revolution in Kyiv (which had earlier been identified as part of the Nazis´ "Revolutionary Archive" in Ratibor) and Communist Party records from Kirovohrad seized by the ERR, possibly some of the Ratibor holdings ended up in the Wolfelsdorf area in the process of retreat back to Germany. However, had the Petliura materials been involved with the Habelschwerdt/Wblfelsdorf mate rials, they would most probably have gone directly to the Special Archive in Moscow, TsGOA (now part of RGVA), rather than first to Minsk-the actual route of the Petliura archival materials now in that archive (as we will see below).

The Heeresarchiv and UNR Records from Poland and Western Ukraine

The ERR was not alone in its interest in UNR materials. Immediately following the Nazi invasion in the east, first in Poland, and later in the USSR, the Heeresarchiv (Reich Military Archive) sent out diligent scouts to comb archives in the occupied lands for military-related archival loot of interest to their extensive research operations. In terms of military history, locating records of military operations during World War I was among their highest priorities. They also were interested in operations involving the struggling Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) under Petliura and other attempts to establish an independent Ukrainian state, and assembled a special collection (with a 54-page inventory) of relevant files relating to the Polish-Ukrainian and Ukrainian involvement in the Polish-Bolshevik War (1918-1920).52 Headquartered in Potsdam, relevant records from Cracow, Lviv, and Warsaw were shipped principally to their subsidiary branch in Danzig-Oliva (Pol. Oliwa), together with other Polish military records. In September 1944, the Nazis were already evacuating Danzig, and moved some of the materials to their main centers for Western European military records in Berlin-Wannsee. At least some of these materials were intentionally destroyed in April 1945, and others had perished during the bombing of Danzig.53 But the fact that Soviet military forces cleared out the Berlin-Wannsee repository in May 1945 explains why many of the Nazi-captured foreign military records, in addition to the Nazi Heeresarchiv operational files, are now held in Moscow.54

UNR Records in Cracow and Tarnów

Other Nazi agencies operating in the east were also interested in the archives of the Petliura regime, especially the Reichsarchiv, which-rather than the ERR-handled preservation and, eventually, seizures of more politically oriented archives in occupied countries during the war. As was already mentioned at the outset, a major part of the UNR records had been stored since their creation in Tarnow, Poland, where the UNR had purchased a building that served as one of their operation centers during their active participation as a Polish ally in the military operations against the new Bolshevik regime. Some of the Ukrainian emigration had stayed on in Tarnow during the interwar period, and the city even boasted a museum of Ukrainian history. In the course of the wartime occupation of Poland, Nazi authorities discovered a significant body of UNR records in Tarnow, which had apparently been held in the same building as the museum. These included the records of the UNR Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Finance, a significant quantity of bank notes, and some printed books and other materials. The museum also boasted the records of the Ukrainian military chief of staff and three divisions, but the migration of these materials has not been established. At least part of the archive reportedly had been purchased by Metropolitan Andrei SheptytsTcyi, and accordingly, the Nazi archival administration initially planned to transfer it to Lviv to be consolidated with the SheptytsTcyi archive there, as is evidenced in an early report in 1941.55 This was never carried out, however, and the archive was subsequently transferred from Tarnow to Cracow. Nazi archivist Heinz Goring, who earlier headed the State Archive in Krolewiec, and who was subsequently in charge of the State Archive in Cracow during the war, personally supervised the transport of 160 crates of the Petliura UNR materials to Cracow in March 1942. So important did he consider the materials that he personally kept the key to the room where they were held.56

In contrast to the Petliura Library materials, the UNR Foreign Ministry materials in Cracow were deemed of such high priority that even during the war, manpower was devoted to careful processing and the production of a full inventory. One of the Polish archival directors, Wlodzimierz Budka, who had been retained in Nazi archival service in Cracow during the war, was charged with the arrangement and description of the UNR materials from Tarnow.

Between November 1942 and February 1943, he arranged three groups of the materials, namely the bank notes, publications, and archival documents. Then, with the assistance of a Ukrainian specialist from Lviv, Volodymyr Matsiak, by July 1943 he had arranged the Foreign Ministry files and prepared an inventory covering 258 files and bound volumes.57 A copy of that German inventory (dated 1943) remains among the records of the Nazi State Archival Administration (Reichsarchivverwaltung).58 These portions of the UNR Foreign Ministry records were evacuated to the Wieliczka salt mine in January 1944, along with other Cracow archives.59 By 1942 the director of the Archival Administration in Cracow was well aware of major concentrations of UNR materials held elsewhere. In one of his survey reports on the subject, he noted the Petliura Library from Kremenets (Pol. Krzemieniec) in Volhynia which had been taken to Paris earlier with some Ukrainian books from the University in Kyiv. He went on to explain that the Paris Petliura Library had already been brought to Berlin for the ERR.60

Apparently not all of the UNR records found in Tarnow were immediately brought to Cracow in 1942. Among 70 crates left in Tarnow were bank notes and the printing press for the bank notes (cellar at Parkstrasse 22).61 Later in 1944, the Ukrainian archivist Volodymyr Matsiak processed the materials from the Ministry of Finance (58 packets).62 A handwritten copy of a summary inventory of those materials prepared for Nazi archival authorities is now held in Moscow among the scattered records of the Reichsarchiv (Potsdam).63 Those files from the Ministry of Finance also survived the war. All of the materials taken to Wieliczka were returned safely to the State Archive in Cracow after the liberation of the city in January 1945. According to a marginal note on a report of archival developments in Cracow during the war, Soviet authorities removed the UNR materials (then 93 boxes, including bank notes) from the State Archive storage area (54, ul. Grodska) at the end of March 1945.64

It is quite remarkable to what extent during the war the Nazis had pursued a thorough survey of all sources throughout Europe relating to the UNR, Petliura, and related Ukrainian national movements. The search and reconnaissance efforts were, as we have already seen, being carried out by a number of different Nazi agencies. Nazi occupation authorities in Kyiv in charge of the archival and library administration in Ukraine were also kept closely informed of what was found elsewhere, and of developments with respect to the UNR archive and the Petliura Library from Paris. In turn they themselves were expected to keep close track of any materials found in occupied Ukrainian lands. As is apparent from the discussion above, they were also kept informed of ERR activities in this respect and working closely with the ERR commando units in Ukraine. A lengthy background report on the subject of UNR materials, together with related documents that were forwarded to the director of the Provincial Archival Administration in Kyiv, was found among the records of the Nazi Archival Administration under the Reichskomissariat Ukraine, which are now held in the Central State Archive of Higher Organs of State Power and Administration of Ukraine (TsDAVO) in Kyiv.65

UNR Records in Prague-RZIA/UIK

Prague, as one of the main homes of the Ukrainian emigration, had been a particularly important gathering point for UNR documentation during the inter-war period. The Russian Foreign Historical Archive (RZIA), founded there in 1923, came under the auspices of the Czech Foreign Ministry in 1928, and a subsidiary Ukrainian Historical Cabinet (UIK) was organized the following year. Thanks to Czech support, augmented by that of the Ukrainian community, UIK was able to acquire and assure the preservation of many previously scattered files. Archival organization in RZIA and UIK reflected the order of acquisition. Miscellaneous documents, fragmentary records, and personal papers were numbered according to the collection with which they were acquired, and usually kept together. Some UNR documents acquired as part of larger Russian emigre collections were never transferred to the Ukrainian Historical Cabinet, but rather remained part of RZIA.

As far as can be determined, all of the UNR files that were accessioned by RZIA and UIK remained in Prague throughout the war. Soon after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and the proclamation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Nazi authorities transferred the administration of RZIA/ UIK from the Foreign Ministry to the Ministry of the Interior, where it remained throughout the war.66 Archivists working under the Nazi occupation continued to prepare descriptions of their contents. The Nazis moved some of the military related materials to a branch of the Heeresarchiv outside of Prague, as mentioned in their reports, but no evidence has been found of UIK materials moved there, and apparently there was no attempt to unite the fragmentary UNR files in RZIA with UNR records found elsewhere.67 The Nazis investigated what UNR records were to be found in Prague, but when they determined that there were only scattered UNR files, presumably from personal collections, they made no attempt to unite the fragmentary UNR files in RZIA and UIK with UNR records in Cracow or Ratibor.68

UNR Records in Vienna

The Nazis also had carefully surveyed the UNR records located in Vienna. One particularly important group there actually comprised the records of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (ZUNR), including the papers of the ZUNR President levhen Petrushevych (Evgen Petrushewitz), which the Nazis found in the custody of the Rev. Myron Hornykevych (Gornykewytsch), who was the parish priest of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church of St. Barbara (Plenerstrasse 18). The Nazis had translated a background survey and relatively precise inventory of the contents of the major 27 sections.69 In 1942, they arranged for these records to be taken into custody in deposit status by the State Archive in Vienna, together with the papers of the important Ukrainian political thinker V´iacheslav LypynsTcyi (Waclaw Lipinski) and a major segment of papers of Metropolitan SheptytsTcyi.70

While the LypynsTfyi archives had their own odyssey and eventually found a home in Philadelphia, the much larger bulk of ZUNR documentation remained in Vienna until well after the war. It did not fall prey to postwar Soviet archival trophy hunters, as was the case with other Ukrainian archives in Vienna.71 At some point during the postwar period, the archive was transferred to Rome, where it remains today in the custody of the Saint Clement Ukrainian Catholic University. Rev. Hornykevych prepared a German-language finding aid which was more detailed than the summary list of contents prepared by the Nazis.72 The majority of the records deal with the activity of the Western Ukrainian Government during its period in emigration, starting with late 1919. They include many interesting files of particular emigre leaders (especially letters), and a collection of Ukrainian emigre newspapers and serials from the period. Another important group of materials relating to the UNR held in the Austrian National Archives also escaped both Nazi and Soviet looters. The records were not disturbed, and later served as the basis for a major postwar documentary publication.

Postscript: Soviet Postwar Retrieval

Documentation of the postwar Soviet archival retrieval and "trophy" cultural seizure operations is still fragmentary and dispersed. Nonetheless, thanks to recently opened files and the seized records themselves, new facts are emerging about where, when, and why, various Nazi-looted archival collections were seized by Soviet authorities. Often they have with them the surviving records of Nazi wartime operations. As it turns out, major portions of the archival materials confiscated by the Nazis from the Petliura Library in Paris, together with the looted library books and periodicals, fell into Soviet hands after the war. Surviving groups of records (Soviet-style fonds) in various archives together with operational documentation-both Soviet reports and Nazi records-provide new clues, and in some cases hard evidence, of what Ukrainian collections the Nazis had seized from Paris and other European centers, what materials Nazi authorities succeeded in evacuating from Berlin to Silesia (and from Silesia to the west), and what materials were in turn seized by Soviet authorities after the war.

In almost all cases, the original order within integral collections and/or their existing working order in Nazi hands have been lost: Soviet archival practice required the strict separation of Nazi records from the captured "trophy" archives, and the division (even if it meant fragmentation) of integral collections by establishing strict separate "fonds" for each subgroup of files that could be identified as coming from a specific agency, or the personal papers of an individual. In the haste and confusion of retrieval and "trophy" operations, many materials arrived in haphazard fragments, with no apparent order at all. Besides, postwar Soviet archival operations under the NKVD/MVD had as their immediate priority the "operational utilization" of archival files to find Nazi collaborators, anti-Soviet or "bourgeois-nationalist" elements, and other potential enemies of the regime, rather than preparing the materials for eventual research use or restitution to their prewar archival home.

It has not been possible to establish where all the Petliura Library materials and other UNR records were recovered by Soviet authorities. Many were found together with the vast library collections that the Nazis had looted from occupied Soviet lands, and of these many were taken to the Ratibor area in Silesia. They were not all recovered at the same time or from the same place. They are now dispersed in many different fonds in two different archives in Moscow, with additional fragments in two more archives in Kyiv. Those fonds that have been uncovered certainly may not reprensent all those that have survived Soviet purges and library and archival "cleansing" operations. We know with certainty that some of the materials were destroyed, but there might be more libraries and archives in which we should search for possible survivors or clues to their fate. The most sizable archival collections from the Petliura Library in Paris came to Moscow from Minsk in 1955 and more materials were transferred from Minsk to Kyiv in the 1980s. Thus, the wartime odyssey of the Petliura Library requires, in turn, a close examination of its migrations and fate in the postwar period.

****

A terrible fragmentation and dispersal of archival and library collections was wrought by the Nazi regime during the war and the Soviet regime thereafter. The Petliura Library materials are but a poignant example of this fate. What was done by the totalitarian regimes remains a serious detriment to history and culture, and to scholarship East and West. The dispersal of documentation from the Ukrainian struggle for independence (especially from the Petliura regime) throughout Europe resulted from the larger political expediencies that dispersal served. If today there is a real spirit of Ukrainian political renewal, as one hopes, we should also hope that appropriate archival restitution could reunite the archival collections of the Petliura Library and the UNR regime. However, to promote such restitution, or even if some of the collections can only be brought together in library microforms, we still need a thorough, publicly available inventory of their contents and migration. Indeed, the survival of that documentation, and our knowledge about it, may help promote more open research on the Petliura government, its leader, and the many unresolved issues surrounding them.

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES

APKr

Archiwum Panstwowe w Krakowie (State Archive in Cracow)

BA-K

Bundesarchiv, Koblenz (most of the records cited have since been transferred to the new Bundesarchiv facility in Berlin-Lichterfelde, but archivists recommend retaining the BA-K codes)

Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi osobyi arkhiv SSSR (Central State SSSR - Special Archive of the USSR), Moscow (1992-1999, TsKhlDK; now part of RGVA)

TsKhlDK

Tsentr khraneniia istoriko-dokumental´nykh kollektsii (Center for the Preservation of Historico-Documentary Collections), Moscow (as of March 1999, now part of the reorganized RGVA; formerly TsGOA SSSR)

N.B. The archival term "fond" has been anglicized, since there is no exact translation. The term came to the Soviet Union from the French fonds, but not without some change of usage. In Russian a "fond" is an integral group of records or a collection from a single office or source. American archivists might prefer the more technical term "record group," which in British usage would normally be "archive group," but the Russian usage of the term is much more extensive, as a "fond" can designate personal papers and/or collections as well as groups of institutional records.
In citations from former Soviet-area archives, numbers are given sequentially for fond (record group, etc.) / opis´ ([Ukr. opys] a series or separate numbered file list or inventory within a fond) / and delo ([Ukr. sprava] file or unit) numbers.